Author Archives: delloruth

Reconstruction Part Two “Every revolution has its counterrevolution – that is a sign the revolution is for real.” C. Wright Mills The issues “central to Reconstruction are as old as the American republic and as contemporary as the inequalities that still afflict our society”. Eric Foner Reconstruction:America’s Unfinished Revolution, 1863-1877 Recently I spoke with aContinue reading ““I Feel Limited””

In 1907 a statue was erected on the courthouse lawn of a college town in North Mississippi. A Confederate solder gazes south across the town square, down South Lamar Avenue toward the countryside of Lafayette County, Mississippi. It stands less than a mile from William Faulkner’s home. In the middle of a pandemic that hasContinue reading “Reconstruction Part One”

I am deep into the topic of Reconstruction. The events, personalities, and issues speak loudly to us today. In 1871 the U.S. Congress took testimony to document the KKK’s violent response to Reconstruction. I want to share the words of those who suffered that violence. Black legislators made some inspiring speeches at the state andContinue reading “So much to study on Reconstruction”

The South is my home even if I don’t always feel at home in it. The voices and experiences that stamped me were within a lopsided geometric shape connecting Memphis /Mississippi, South Carolina, Georgia and Florida. All of these states were members of the Confederacy and slavery was deeply embedded in the economy and cultureContinue reading “The Ladder Part Two”

As I yearned to find my voice and a different path in my life, I was constantly influenced by the family and community around me. When I found my own voice, I  paid a price.  When I did not find my voice, others paid a worse price.   Today I wonder what makes that counter culturalContinue reading “The Ladder”

This is my mother around 1948-1950 Stamped by Voices Artists of all kinds have used self-examination for a long time to express how they became who they are and to challenge those who participate in their art.  James Baldwin used his self-examination to better understand why America could not come to terms with the raceContinue reading “Stamped by Voices”

My great, great grandfather Johnston signed Mississippi’s Declaration to Secede the Union. In January 1861, Stephen Darden Johnston represented DeSoto County as a delegate to the Mississippi Secession Convention. He lived no more than 50 miles from where I now reside. I was always told that my mother’s father, grew up on a plantation inContinue reading ““Telling the truth about the past helps cause justice in the present. Achieving justice in the present helps us tell the truth about the past.” James Loewen”

Walt Whitman used the phrase “after times” to describe America after the Civil War.  Eddie Glaude, Jr. , professor of African American studies at Princeton, defines the phrase as what has come before and what is beginning to appear,  and compares it to James Baldwin’s deep anguish and disappointment after the Civil Rights movement.  AfterContinue reading “After Times”